LONDON/BAGHDAD: A lawyer for Saddam Hussein said the deposed Iraqi leader believes someone tipped off US forces to his whereabouts, resulting in his capture from a spider hole near his hometown of Tikrit, a newspaper reported yesterday.

The Sun quoted former US Attorney-General Ramsey Clark as giving Saddam's view of his capture two years ago. "Saddam thinks he was gassed in the tunnel," the newspaper quoted Clark as saying. "He tried to get to the exit of the tunnel. But he did not have time to get away. He told us he spent maybe minutes in this tunnel not hours or days.

"When he started to get out there were soldiers around that area. There was supposed to be a motorcycle there. It was gone," Clark told the newspaper. He is a member of Saddam's defence team in the trial on mass murder charges.

"Saddam knew the person who owned the house wasn't there. He knew he had been betrayed," Clark said.

He said Saddam told his lawyers that he had been moving around Iraq daily with the help of insurgents, but every few days he came back to this escape.

'Dr Germ,' 'Mrs Anthrax' set free

About 24 top former officials in Saddam Hussein's government including two women detainees known as "Dr Germ" and "Mrs Anthrax" have been released from jail, a legal official in Baghdad, who declined to give his name, said yesterday.

Rihab Taha, a British-educated biological weapons expert, was known as "Dr Germ" for her role in making bio-weapons in the 1980s. Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, "Mrs Anthrax," a former top Baath party official, was a biotech researcher.

"Because of security reasons, some of them want to leave the country," said Iraqi lawyer Badee Izzat Aref yesterday. He declined to say where to and when, but noted that "some have already left Iraq today."

Source: China Daily